girl, wearied by the climb or in a spirit of fun, had mounted her cow while driving it home; and with a smile at the thought of the confusion he would cause her, Clayton stepped around the boulder and awaited their approach. With the slow, easy swing of climbing cattle, the beast brought its rider into view. A bag of meal lay across its shoulders, and behind this the girlfor she was plainly young-sat sidewise, with her bare feet dangling against its flank. Her face was turned toward the valley below, and her loosened bonnet half disclosed a head of bright yellow hair.

Catching sight of Clayton, the beast stopped and lifted its head, not the meek, patient face he expected to see, but a head that was wrinkled and vicious-the head of a bull. Only the sudden remembrance of a dead mountain custom saved him from utter amazement. He had heard that long ago, when beasts of burden were scarce, cows and especially bulls were worked in plows and ridden by the mountaineers, even by the women. But this had become a tradition, the humor of which greater prosperity and contact with a new civilization had taught even the mountain people to appreciate. The necessities of this girl were evidently as great as her fear of ridicule seemed smalĺ. When the brute stopped, she began striking him in the flank with her bare heel, without looking around, and as he paid no attention to such painless goading, she turned with sudden impatience and lifted a switch above his shoulders. The stick was arrested in mid-air when she saw Clayton, and then dropped harmlessly. The quick fire in her eyes died suddenly away, and for a moment the two looked at each other with mutual curiosity, but only for a moment. There was something in Clayton's gaze that displeased her. Her face clouded, and she dropped her eyes.

"G' long," she said, in a low tone. But the bull had lowered his head, and was standing with feet planted apart and tail waving uneasily. The girl looked up in alarm.

"Watch out thar!" she called out sharply. "Call thet dog off- quick!"

Clayton turned, but his dog sprang past him and began to bark. The bull, a lean, active, vicious-looking brute, answered with a

had disappeared around the boulder. The bag had fallen and had broken open, and some of the meal was spilled on the ground. The girl, flushed and angry, stood above it.

"Look thar, now," she said. "See whut you 've done. Why didn't ye call thet dog off?" "I could n't," said, Clayton, politely. "He would n't come. I'm sorry, very sorry." "Can't ye manage yer own dog?" she asked, half contemptuously. "Not always."

"Then ye oughter leave him ter home, and not let him go round a-skeerin' folks' beastis." With a little gesture of indignation she stooped and began scooping up the meal in her hand. "Let me help you," said Clayton. The girl looked up in surprise.

"Go 'way," she said.

But Clayton stayed, watching her helplessly. He wanted to carry the bag for her, but she swung it to her shoulder, and moved away. He followed her around the boulder, where his late enemy was browsing peacefully on sassafras-bushes.

"You stay thar," said the girl, " and keep thet dog back."

"Won't you let me help you get up?" he asked.

Without answering, the girl sprang lightly to the bull's back. Once only she looked around at him. He took off his hat, and a puzzled expression came into her face. Then without a word or a nod she rode away. Clayton watched the odd pair till the bushes hid them.

"Well," he thought, as he sat down upon a a stone in bewilderment, "if that kind of girl was partial to bull-riding in mythological days, I don't know that I envy the old furioso of Olympus when he carried off Europa."

She seemed a very odd creature, singularly different from the timid mountain women who shrank with averted faces almost into the bushes when he met them. She had looked him straight in the face with steady eyes, and had spoken as though her sway over mountain and road were undisputed and he had been a wretched trespasser. She had paid no attention to his apologies, and had scorned his offers of assistance. She seemed no more angered by the loss of the meal than by his incapacity to manage his dog, which seemed to typify to her his general worthlessness. He had been bruised severely by his fall, and she did not even ask if he were hurt. Indeed, she seemed not to care, and she had ridden away from him as though he were worth no more consideration than the stone on which he rested.

He was amused, and a trifle irritated. How could there be such a curious growth in the mountains, he questioned, as he rose and con

tinued the descent? There was an unusual grace about her, in spite of her masculine air. Her features were regular, almost classic in outline, the nose straight and delicate, the mouth resolute, the brow broad and intelligent, and the eyes intensely blue,- tender, perhaps, when not flashing with anger,- and altogether without the listless expression he had marked in all other mountain women, and which, he had noticed, deadened into pathetic hopelessness later in life. Her figure was erect and lithe, and her imperious manner, despite its roughness, savored of something high-born. Where could she have got that bearing? She belonged to a race whose descent, he knew, was unmixed English; upon whose lips still lingered words, phrases, and forms of speech that Shakspere had heard and used. Who could tell what blood ran in her veins ?

Musing, he had come almost unconsciously to a spur of the mountains beneath which lay the little mining-camp. It was six o'clock, and the miners, grim and black, each with a pail in hand and a little oil-lamp in his cap, were going down from work. A shower had passed over the mountains above him, and the last sunlight, coming through a gap in the west, struck the rising mist and turned it to gold. On a rock which thrust from the mountain its gray, somber face, half-embraced by a white arm of the mist, Clayton saw the figure of a woman. He waved his hat, but the figure stood motionless, and he turned into the woods toward the camp.

It was the girl, and when Clayton disappeared she too turned and continued her way. She had stopped there because she knew he must pass a point where she might see him again. She was little less indifferent than she seemed; her motive was little more than curiosity. She had never seen that manner of man before. Evidently he was a furriner," she thought, from the "settlemints." No man in the mountains had a smooth, round face like his, or wore such a queer hat, such a soft, white shirt, and no "galluses," or carried such a shiny, weak-looking stick, or owned a dog that he could n't make mind him. She was not wholly contemptuous, however. She had felt vaguely the meaning of his politeness and deference. She was puzzled and pleased, she scarcely knew why.

"He was mighty accommodatin'," she thought. "But whut," she asked herself, as she rode slowly homeward -"whut did he take off his hat fer?"

II.

LIGHTS twinkled from every cabin as Clayton passed through the camp. Outside the kitchen doors, miners, bare to the waist, were

bathing their blackened faces and bodies, with children, tattered and unclean, but healthful, playing about them; within, women in loose gowns, with sleeves uprolled and with disordered hair, moved like phantoms through clouds of savory smoke. The commissary was brilliantly lighted. At a window close by improvident miners were drawing the wages of the day, while their wives waited in the store with baskets unfilled. In front of the commissary a crowd of negroes were talking, laughing, singing, and playing pranks like children. Here two, with grinning faces, were squared off, not to spar, but to knock at each other's tattered hat; there two more, with legs and arms indistinguishable, were wrestling; close by was the sound of a mouth-harp, a circle of interested spectators, and, within, two dancers pitted against each other, and shuffling with a zest that labor seemed never to affect.

Immediately after supper Clayton went to his room, lighted his lamp, and sat down to a map he was tracing. His room was next the ground, and a path ran near the open window. As he worked, every passer-by paused a moment to look curiously within. On the wall above his head a pair of fencing-foils were crossed beneath masks. Below these hung two pistols, such as courteous Claude Duval used for side-arms. Opposite were two old rifles, and beneath them two stone beer-mugs, and a German student's pipe absurdly long and richly ornamented. A mantel close by was filled with curiosities, and near it hung a banjo unstrung, a tennis-racket, and a blazer of startling colors. Plainly they were relics of German student life, and the odd contrast they made with the rough wall and ceiling suggested a sharp change in the fortunes of the young worker beneath. Scarcely six months since he had been suddenly summoned home from Germany. The reason was vague, but having read of recent American failures, notably in Wall street, he knew what had happened. Reaching New York, he was startled for an instant by the fear that his mother was dead, so gloomy was the house, so subdued his sister's greeting, and so worn and sad his father's face. The trouble, however, was what he had guessed, and he had accepted it with quiet resignation. The financial wreck seemed complete; but one resource, however, was left. Just after the war Clayton's father had purchased mineral lands in the South, and it was with the idea of developing these that he had encouraged the marked scientific tastes of his son, and had sent him to a German university. In view of his own disaster and the fact that a financial tide was swelling southward, his forethought seemed almost an inspiration. To this resource Clayton turned eagerly; and after a few weeks at home, which were made

intolerable by straitened circumstances, and the fancied coldness of friend and acquaintance, he was hard at work in the heart of the Kentucky mountains.

The transition from the careless life of a student was swift and bitter; it was like beginning a new life with a new identity, though Clayton suffered less than he anticipated. He had become interested from the first. There was nothing in the pretty glen, when he came, but a mountaineer's cabin and a few gnarled old apple-trees, the roots of which checked the musical flow of a little stream. Then the air was filled with the tense ring of hammer and saw, the mellow echoes of axes, and the shouts of ox-drivers from the forests, indignant groans from the mountains, and suddenly a little town sprang up before his eyes, and cars of shining coal wound slowly about the mountain-side.

Activity like this stirred his blood. Busy from dawn to dark, he had no time to grow miserable. His work was hard, to be sure, but it made rest and sleep a luxury, and it had the new zest of independence; he even began to take in it no little pride when he found himself an essential part of the quick growth going on. When leisure came, he could take to woods filled with unknown birds, new forms of insect life, and strange plants and flowers. With every day, too, he was more deeply stirred by the changing beauty of the mountainshidden at dawn with white mists, faintly veiled through the day with an atmosphere that made him think of Italy, and enriched by sunsets of startling beauty. But strongest of all was the interest he found in the odd human mixture about him the simple, good-natured darkies who slouched past him, magnificent in physique and picturesque with rags; occasional foreigners just from Castle Garden, with the hope of the New World still in their faces; and now and then a gaunt mountaineer stalking awkwardly in the rear of this march toward civilization. Gradually it had dawned upon him that this last, silent figure, traced through Virginia, was closely linked by blood and speech with the common people of England, and, molded perhaps by the influences of feudalism, was still strikingly unchanged; that now it was the most distintively national remnant on American soil, and symbolized the development of the continent; and that with it must go the last suggestions of the pioneers, with their hardy physiques, their speech, their manners and customs, their simple architecture and simple mode of life. It was soon plain to him, too, that a change was being wrought at last-the change of destruction. The older mountaineers, whose bewildered eyes watched the noisy signs of an unintelligible civilization, were passing away. Of the rest, some, sullen and restless,

were selling their homesteads and following the spirit of their forefathers into a new wilderness; others, leaving their small farms in adjacent valleys to go to ruin, were gaping idly about the public works, caught up only too easily by the vicious current of the incoming tide. In a century the mountaineers must be swept away, and their ignorance of the tragic forces at work among them gave them an unconscious pathos that touched Clayton deeply.

As he grew to know them, their historical importance yielded to a genuine interest in the people themselves. They were densely ignorant, to be sure; but they were natural, simple, and hospitable. Their sense of personal worth was high, and their democracy-or aristocracy, since there was no distinction of caste-absolute. For generations son had lived like father in an isolation hardly credible. No influence save such as shook the nation ever reached them. The Mexican war, slavery, and national politics of the first half-century were still present issues, and each old man would give his rigid, individual opinion sometimes with surprising humor and force. He went much among them, and the rugged old couples whom he found in the cabin porches-so much alike at first-quickly became distinct with a quaint individuality. Among young or old, however, he had found nothing like the half-wild young creature he had met on the mountain that day. In her a type had crossed his path-had driven him from it, in truth-that seemed unique and inexplicable. He had been little more than amused at first, but a keen interest had been growing in him with every thought of her, and to-night, as he laid aside his pencil, the incidents of the encounter on the mountain came minutely back to him till he saw her again as she rode away, her supple figure swaying with every movement of the beast, and dappled with quivering circles of sunlight from the bushes, her face calm, but still flushed with color, and her yellow hair shaking about her shouldersnot lusterless and flaxen, as hair was in the mountains, he remembered, but catching the sunlight like gold. There was an indefinable charm about the girl. She gave a new and sudden zest to his interest in mountain life. She filled a lack unnoticed before, and he made up his mind to see her again as soon as possible.

As he leaned almost unconsciously from his window to lift his eyes to the dark mountain he had climbed that day, the rude melody of an old-fashioned hymn came faintly up the glen, and he recognized the thin, quavering voice of an old mountaineer, Uncle Tommy Brooks, as he was familiarly known, whose cabin stood in the midst of the camp, a pathetic contrast to the smart new houses that had sprung up around it. The old man had lived in the glen

for nearly three quarters of a century, and he, if any one, must know the girl. With the thought, Clayton sprang through the window, and a few minutes later was at the cabin. The old man sat whittling in the porch, joining in the song with which his wife was crooning a child to sleep within. Clayton easily identified Europa, as he had christened her; the simple mention of her means of transport was sufficient.

"Ridin' a bull, was she?" repeated the old man, laughing. "Well, thet was Easter Hicks, old Bill Hicks's gal. She's a sort o' connection o' mine. Me and Bill merried cousins. She's a cur'us critter ez ever I seed. She don' seem ter take atter her dad nur her mammy nuther, though Bill allus hed a quar streak in 'im, and was the wust man I ever seed when he was disguised by licker. Whar does she live? Oh, up thar, right on top o' Wolf Mountain, with her mammy."

"Alone?"

"Yes; fer her dad ain't thar. No; 'n' he ain't dead. I'll tell ye," - the old man lowered his tone,-"thar used ter be a big lot o' moonshinin' done in these parts, 'n' a' off'cer came in hyar ter see 'bout it. Well, one mornin' he was found layin' in the road with a bullet through him. Bill was s'pected. I ain't a-sayin' ez Bill did it, but when a whole lot more rode up thar on horses one night, they did n't find Bill. They hain't found him yit, fer he's out in the mountains somewhar a-hidin'."

"How do they get along without him?" asked Clayton.

66

Why, ther gal does the work. She plows with thet bull, and does the plantin' herself. She kin chop wood like a man. 'N' ez fer shootin', well, when huntin' 's good 'n' thar 's shootin'matches roundabout, she don't hev ter buy much meat."

"It's a wonder some young fellow has n't married her. I suppose, though, she's too young."

The old man laughed. "Thar's been many a lively young feller thet 's tried it, but she's ez hard to ketch ez a wildcat. She won't hev nuthin' to do with other folks, 'n' she never comes down hyar inter the valley, 'cept ter git her corn ground er ter shoot er turkey. Sherd Raines goes up ter see her, and folks say he air tryin' ter git her inter the church. But the gal won't go nigh a meetin'-house. She air a cur'us critter," he concluded emphatically, "shy ez er deer till she air stirred up, then she air a caution; mighty gentle sometimes, and ag'in ez stubborn ez a mule."

A shrill infantile scream came from within, and the old man paused a moment to listen. "Ye did n't know I hed a great-grandchild, did ye? Thet's it a-hollerin'. Talk about Easter bein' too young to merry! Why, hits mother

air two year younger 'n Easter. Come in and take a peep." The old mountaineer rose and led the way into the cabin. Clayton was embarrassed at first. On one bed lay a rather comely young woman with a child by her side; on a chest close by sat another with her lover, courting in the most open and primitive manner. In the corner an old grandam dozed with her pipe, her withered face just touched by the rim of the firelight. Near a rectangular hole in the wall which served the purpose of a window stood a girl whose face, silhouetted against the darkness, had in it a curious mixture of childishness and maturity.

"Whar 's ther baby?" asked Uncle Tommy. Somebody outside was admiring it, and the young girl leaned through the window and lifted the infant within.

"Thar's a baby fer ye!" exclaimed the old mountaineer, proudly, lifting it in the air and turning its face to the light. But the child was peevish and fretful, and he handed it back gently. Clayton was wondering which was the mother, when, to his amazement, almost to his confusion, the girl lifted the child calmly to her own breast. The child was the mother of the child. She was barely fifteen, with the face of a girl of twelve, and her motherly manner had struck him as an odd contrast. He felt a thrill of pity for the young mother as he called to mind the aged young wives he had seen who were haggard and careworn at thirty, and who still managed to live to an old age. He was indefinably glad that Easter had escaped such a fate. When he left the cabin, the old man called after him from the door:

"Thar's goin' ter be a shootin'-match among the boys ter-morrer, 'n' I jedge that Easter will be on hand. She allus is."

"Is that so?" said Clayton. "Well, I 'll look out for it."

The old mountaineer lowered his voice. "Ye hain't thinkin' about takin' er wife, air ye?"

"No, no!"

"Well, ef ye air," said the old man, slowly, "I'm a-thinkin' ye 'll hev ter buck up ag'in' Sherd Raines, fer ef I hain't like a goose a-pickin' o' grass by moonshine, Sherd air atter the gal fer hisself, not fer the Lord. Yes," he continued, after a short, dry laugh; "'n' mebbe ye 'll hev ter keep an eye open fer old Bill. They say thet he air mighty low down, 'n' kind o' sorry 'n' skeary, fer I reckon Sherd Raines hev told him he hev got ter pay the penalty fer takin' a human life; but I would n't sot much on his bein' sorry ef he was mad at me and hed licker in him. He hates furriners, and he has a crazy idee thet they is all off'cers 'n' lookin' fer him."

"I don't think I'll bother him," said Clay

ton, turning away with a laugh. "Good night!" With a little cackle of incredulity, the old man closed the door. The camp had sunk now to perfect quietude; but for the faint notes of a banjo far up the glen, not a sound trembled on the night air.

The rim of the moon was just visible above the mountain on which Easter- what a pretty name that was!—had flashed upon his vision with such theatric effect. As its brilliant light came slowly down the dark mountain-side, the mists seemed to loosen their white arms, and to creep away like ghosts mistaking the light for dawn. With the base of the mountain in dense shadow, its crest, uplifted through the vapors, seemed poised in the air at a startling height. Yet it was near the crest that he had met her. Clayton paused a moment, when he reached his door, to look again. Where in that cloudland could she live? he wondered.

III.

As the great bell struck the hour of the next noon, mountaineers with long rifles across their shoulders were already moving through the camp. The glen opened into a valley, which, blocked on the east by Pine Mountain, was thus shut in on every side by wooded heights. Here the marksmen were gathered. All were mountaineers, lank, bearded men, coatless for the most part, and dressed in brown home-made jeans, slouched, formless hats, and high, coarse boots. Sun and wind had tanned their faces to sympathy, in color, with their clothes, which had the dun look of the soil. They seemed peculiarly a race of the soil, to have sprung as they were from the earth, which had left indelible stains upon them. All carried long rifles, old-fashioned and home-made, some even with flint-locks. It was Saturday, and many of their wives had accompanied them to the camp. These stood near, huddled into a listless group, with their faces half hidden in check bonnets of various colors. A barbaric love of color was apparent in bonnet, shawl, and gown, and surprisingly in contrast with such crudeness of taste was a face when fully seen, so modest was it. The features were always delicately wrought, and softened sometimes by a look of patient suffering almost into refinement.

On the other side of the contestants were the people of the camp, a few miners with pipes lounging on the ground, and women and girls, who returned the furtive glances of the mountain women with stares of curiosity and low laughter.

Clayton had been delayed by his work, and the match was already going on when he reached the grounds.

"Ye hev missed some mighty fine shootin',"

said Uncle Tommy Brooks, who was squatted on the ground near the group of marksmen. "Sherd's been a-beatin' everybody. I'm afeard Easter hain't a-comin'. The match air almost over now. Ef she 'd been here, I don't think Sherd would 'a' got the ch'ice parts o' thet beef so easy."

"Which is he?" asked Clayton.

"Thet tall feller thar loadin' his gun." "What did you say his name was?" "Sherd Raines, the feller thet 's goin' ter be our circuit-rider."

He remembered the peculiar name. So this was Easter's lover. Clayton looked at the young mountaineer, curiously at first and then with growing interest. His quiet air of authority among his fellows was like a birthright; it seemed assumed and accepted unconsciously. His face was smooth, and he was fuller in figurethan the rest, but still sinewy and lank, though not awkward; his movements were too quick and decisive for that. With a casual glance Clayton had wondered what secret influence could have turned to spiritual things a man so merely animal-like in face and physique; but when the mountaineer thrust back his hat, an elemental strength and a seriousness of character were apparent in the broad, square brow, the steady, fearless glow of the eye, a certain poise of the head, and in lines around the strong mouth and chin in which the struggle for self-mastery had been traced.

As the mountaineer thrust his ramrod back into its casing, he glanced at the woods behind Clayton, and said something to his companions. They, too, raised their eyes, and at the same moment the old mountaineer plucked Clayton by the sleeve.

"Thar comes Easter now."

The girl had just emerged from the edge of the forest, and with a rifle on one shoulder and a bullet-pouch and powder-horn swung from the other, was slowly descending the path.

"Why, how air ye, Easter ?" cried the old man, heartily, as she approached. "Goin' ter shoot, air ye? I 'lowed ye would n't miss this. Ye air mighty late, though."

"Oh, I only wanted er turkey," said the girl. “Well, I'm a-comin' up ter eat dinner with ye ter-morrer," he answered, with a laugh, "fer I know ye 'll git one. Ye air on hand fer most o' the matches now. Wild turkeys must be a-gittin' skase."

The girl smiled, showing a row of brilliant white teeth between her thin, red lips, and, without answering, moved toward the group of mountain women. Clayton had raised his hand to his hat when the old man addressed her, but he dropped it quickly to his side in no little embarrassment when the girl carelessly glanced over him with no sign of recognition. Her rifle